We have to break Congress monopoly in this country: Advani

Sonepat (Haryana), Nov 1 (IANS) We have to “break the monopoly of the Congress” from this country, Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani said here Saturday, charging that India was “overflowing” with the bad policies of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA).”We have to break the monopoly of Congress from this country and in order to do that effectively, all the opposition parties have to form a single alliance. Our country is overflowing with the bad policies of the UPA,” Advani said while addressing a huge gathering at the Vijay Sankalp (victory pledge) rally organised by NDA partner Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) here, 75 km from Delhi.

The rally was the first major show of strength by the BJP and the INLD after they forged an electoral alliance in Haryana last month. Scores of men and women gathered at the HUDA ground along the busy national highway No. 1 to attend the rally.

Advani said: “During our tenure of six years, the NDA government kept a check on rising inflation while the UPA has increased the inflation manifold. Despite various economic restrictions posed on us by the US in the wake of our historic Pokharan nuclear tests, we did not let the prices of commodities to increase.”

He criticised the UPA government for failing to control the suicides by debt-ridden farmers. “The debt waiver scheme of the UPA was just a political stunt. It did not mitigate the suffering of the poor farmers,” he added.

“The Congress party has an illusion that India only constitutes cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata but the ground reality is that 70 percent of Indians still live in the rural areas. They are quite ignorant towards the farmers’ community and are rampantly converting the world’s most arable land into industrial units,” said BJP president Rajnath Singh.

“In the last four and a half years, terrorism has mushroomed at an alarming rate in our country. We admit that there were terrorist attacks during the NDA government but we were successful in nabbing the accused and in conducting speedy trials. The UPA government has failed on this front,” said Singh.

“Radical groups from Pakistan are crossing the line of control and are hoisting the Pakistani flag and raising slogans against India in our territory. The UPA government is seeing all this as a mute spectator,” said Singh.

“It is quite sad that three foreign educated individuals - Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia - are only busy in selling our county to foreign players. They are just filling the pockets of some prominent families and our farmer community is at the receiving end of their cynical policies,” claimed INLD leader Om Parkash Chautala.